The mathematics of internet congestion control (Q1428349)

This well-written book presents an overview of the mathematics behind internet congestion control. Focussing on the well-established TCP protocol, it starts with a gentle introduction into TCP and the packet/acknowledgement structure of the internet, before proceeding to congestion and the principles of congestion control. In chapter 3 the author presents the primal and dual algorithms for a decentralized congestion control solution. The chapter concludes with the random early marking scheme and a note on Lyapunov stability. In the next chapter the principle of window flow control is presented, followed by Jackobson's adaptive approach and other variants. In chapters 5 and 6 the linear analysis with delay is analyzed. The notion of proportional fairness is explained and algorithms are presented. The sections conclude with the Nyquist criteria. In the last chapters of the book more advanced topics are tackled: these include issues of global stability, stochastic models and their limits, and distributed admission control for real-time sources. Overall, this book presents in an easy to understand way the principles of internet congestion control with a focus on the mathematical concepts behind them. The book concludes with a useful index and a rich source of bibliographical references.